Advice please on Home Cinema setup

[The Saint]

I have a Toshiba 32in widescreen (with component inputs), a Panasonic HS-860 SVHS recorder, an Amstrad DX100 Sky Digital receiver and a Toshiba 2109 DVD player. They are housed in a 14ft by 14ft room.


I would like to upgrade the sound system to get the best out of these components. The system will be used both for DVD and CD playback (my wife is more into music than films therefore the ability to cope well with both is a must).

Being a bit of a novice in this area I would welcome your opinions. I am considering buying the following

Denon AVR 3802 (has had good reviews on What Video & TV and Home Entertainment)
Mission Cinema M71 Speaker System and additional m7ds units to provide for centre rears (looking for fairly discreet wall mounted surround units to minimise impact on the room and keep the wife happy!)
An active subwoofer to fill in the lower frequencies the M71s can't handle. (reasonably priced suggestions would be welcome).

Is this a reasonably balanced system or is the Denon likely to be restricted by the quality of the Missions.

Ideally I would like to keep the cost below £1300 (I've seen the Denon at £640, The missions would cost another £450-500 -though I would be prepared to delay the purchase of the additional centre rears to allow me to purchase a decent sub-woofer.

I would also welcome advice on how the sky digital receiver would be hooked up on this type of system as my sky receiver has only a scart RGB out and I believe that the Denon does not have RGB inputs.

As I said earlier I would be grateful for any advice.

[kcxdev]

can't really advise on the components but remember to leave enough of the budget for cables and misc leads (speaker, scarts, digital leads etc). You'd be surprised how much it can come up to :)

[worthit]

Have you thought about the Denon 2802? There's hardly any difference spec. wise with the 3802 and it's only £495 at hifijunkies (I've just bought one from them, give them a ring you may get it even cheaper ;) )

Put that together with the Kef KHT 2005 package (5 satellites and Sub) for around £630 at mdd-av.com (home cinema section, you have to e-mail for prices)

that's approx. £1125, leaving quite a bit spare for cabling :D

[ronski]

For my money I would get the following:

Amp - try and source a 2nd hand Denon 3801 or Sony 1070 for about £400 or as worthit suggests a 2802

This leaves £900 for speakers:

4x601s3 = £500 (or 2x602s3 and 2x602s1 = £550)
lcr60 center = £200
Sub Paradigm PS1000 = £200

I should imagine that the B&Ws would outperform the eggs for music - mind you let your ears decide. Oh and the B&W series 3's look very nice in "sorrento".

Most decent dealers should be able to set up a comparison audition between the Kefs and the B&Ws.

You will of course need budget for stands and cables on top of this.

hope this is of some help

cheers

ronski

BTW - I am biased towards B&W having just brought some :)

[MartinC]

totally agree with the suggestion of a 2802. had one now for 2-3 weeks and very happy with it.

you can get one for £450-495... very similar sound quality
to the 3802 bar the power, and far far better sounding in stereo than the current Sony amps.

there is also a nice 5/7 speaker mode on the Denon for listening to stereo recordings (much better than the prologic II modes for the same).

I'm happily using the Denon with the Mission FS2AV speaker set in a large 13 ft x 22ft room... much better sound than my previous conventional speakers and far less obtrusive.

also sounds fabulous in straight stereo mode.

the set comes with 45m of speaker cable so its unlikely you would have to buy any extra (a significant saving).

you could get both for £495 for the amp, and £450 for the speaker set... so less than £950 for both and some extra money left in the bank for DVDs!

FYI, the only connection you need to make for your Sky box is a std 2 phono connection for getting stereo/ prologic into the amp.

[The Saint]

Good point kcxdev - luckily I purchased most of the speaker cabling and terminal plates when I was in the States in September - unfortunate timing though as I was travelling home only a few days after the bombing of the twin towers! That said I will need to take account of the new cables for the components.

Thanks to Worthit, ronski and MartinC for the system suggestions. I had favoured the 3802 for its future compatibility with 8ch DVD-Audio and SACD but will certainly look again at the 2802.

I will also look at all the speaker suggestions. Though more expensive than the M71s I may be able to convince she who must be obeyed if they are clearly better.

Martin C - Just a short follow up question. I had read somewhere that the FS2AVs are connected to the Amp via the sub-woofer. If so are they fed via the sub-woofers own internal amplifier or directly from the Denon Amp?

Finally, if you know of any on-line reviews for the 2802 or the speakers, I would be grateful for the URLs.

Thanks again to you all.